In a turn of event, an app creator pulled out his app from the app store after it became the number one most downloaded application. The $2.99 application, which blocks advertisement, is now unsearchable in the apple app store engine. The creator, Marco Arment, removed the app called Peace after realizing the harm that the app has done.
"Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn't feel good, which I didn't anticipate," Arment said in a post at Marco.org. Adding that having an ad blocker comes with an advantage and disadvantage, while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, especially those that don't deserve the hit. He is pertaining to the small time websites that makes a living from ads around the web.
Although having an ad blocker makes surfing easier and faster for iPhones and iPads alike, it also sacrifices the fact that websites make a living out of the advertisements they post on their pages. The ad blockers can only be used on websites but not the apps, which is vetted by apple before any ad blocker aps are put on the store.
A study done last month unearthed that software, which blocks online ads are expected to cost websites almost $21.8 billion globally in 2015, and could rise further with the new iOS system of Apple. Big companies are the ones who get hit the most when ad block are used, such as google, which generates its mainstay revenue from advertisements.
Arment concluded that he believed those ad blocks are a necessity today, and still thinks the Ghostery is the best one. He added that he feels bad having to be the creator of one and compared it to war. "A first-world, low-stakes, both-sides-are-fortunate-to-have-this-kind-of-problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides," he said.
